Any short term affects on rent since covid and opened borders?
Published by Jacob Field on 10 May 2022Data shows more people have left Australia than have arrived since Covid and the international borders opened.
International students haven’t yet returned back from overseas.
Should we be concerned with this trend? In addition to rising interest rates. They’re both really good points.
To help us understand this, we worked with Bernard Salt, who is a key demographer in Australia to re-project out population growth figures.
What we did there is we developed a very deep understanding of what generates rental interest, buyer side interest and then more broadly population growth or detraction into a certain area.
So transient workforces, etc. Looking at different local government areas across the country and their reliance on overseas, interstate, intrastate or births and deaths.
We can really reforecast those population growth figures.
Think of it in terms of it might be a shorter term macro trend for an exodus.
People have been buried at the gates wanting to get out and even go back home.
But more broadly, Australia has really performed globally very well through this pandemic.
And it really has I guess bolstered it’s standing internationally for a safe haven, a nice place to live and to work.
So my argument would be over the longer term, covid potentially is going to have a positive impact on international migration into Australia.
That’s just my opinion. This is a moot point though. Macro-economic factors like this are great to talk about and to speculate, but it cannot be at the expense of action.
I’m not talking about buying shares in Australian property.
I’m talking about buying a key asset in a location where we can control the variables.
Sydney might be impacted at a macro potentially, but I’m not buying in Sydney.
I’m buying, as we did very recently in Toowoomba as an example or Perth.
We’re buying in very particular pockets, which are not exposed to international students.
It’s a very low density type of living.
There are next to no units in the suburb, 10% units or less as an example, there’s no exposure to international students.
In fact, there’s a housing shortage, you’ve got 20, 30, 40, 50 people lining up to rent a property, a house in that location.
What I’m saying here is macro trends are great, but we’re not buying shares in Australian property.
We can control our variables, our dialogue and be strategic in our investments and that means that we can take the bull by the horns and buy in an area really set to perform in the shorter and into the medium term and be insulated from these types of impacts.